Hi Folks,
Can anyone help. I have been using Garmin nRoute and a "Garmin GPS18xusb" to facilitate "real time gps" on my laptop. I am now totally frustrated with the ongoing problems that I have and, of course, Garmins lack of support. Can anyone help me with an alternative product? My purpose for using nRoute is to be able to download thousands of Favourites and to be able to have the larger perspective on the laptop.

tcassidy

It is not surprising that Garmin does not provide support for a product that has been out of production for years. Maybe you could give us some idea what your problem with nRoute is and we could help.

It will work with any NMEA GPS a lot more modern than your GPS18 if you use GPS Gate.

I am planning to start a thread on this and compare it to nRoute/MobilePC which I had recently used on an 8" Windows tablet. The dedicated device is really a lot more convenient - it's relatively small, can easily be removed and stashed, includes a mount, power cord/traffic receiver and the 7" screen is much, much brighter than the Windows tablet I was using. But my use is unusual. I make my own maps that have extreme detail and a bigger screen really helps with these.

oztaffy

Hi Terry & Boyd,Thanks for the feedback. The problem for me with “nRoute” is not so much the lack of support, (which is, as you say, understandable given the length of time it has been out of production) but the fact that whenever I need help, as soon as I mention “nRoute” they come out with the line that, “we don’t support “nRoute”. For example I have Mapsource on cd, but need a Product Key to unlock the maps in “nRoute”, so I ring the support people and tell them I need the 25 character Product Key. “What do you need it for” they ask, “to unlock the maps in nRoute”. “I’m sorry but Garmin does not support nRoute”. I have for the last couple of years used the programme without unlocking, which is mildly inconvenient, but I get by. However in the last few days I cannot open the programme. I get the error message, “Error Information” App:nRouteAt 9/15/13 1:20:14 PM (UTC)OS:WIN32 Windows Platform Major Version:6, Minor Version:1 Service Pack 1Processor: Pentium Pro or Pentium II, Ram 4105776UNL_ITEM.HPP-156-2.3I would really like to use “nRoute” as it is perfect (when working properly) for what I want.

tcassidy

Usually when nRoute has a problem opening on one of my computers, it is a faulty map.

If you have registered the MapSource product, the key or means of deriving it should be at the MyGarmin page.

Terry

Ken in Regina

Following up on Terry's comment about it usually being a faulty map, you should pick up a copy of Javawa's GMTK. It does a bunch of stuff. One of the things it will do is check your maps and make sure none are glitched or tell you what's wrong if one is faulty.

...ken...

Ken in Regina

Here's a tip for dealing with Garmin. Your mistake is mentioning nRoute when there is no reason to. You can't unlock a map to nRoute anyway, so why invite the grief you know you're going to get as soon as you mention it?

You can only unlock maps to a Garmin GPS device so just tell them the GPS device you want to unlock the maps to. As soon as the maps are unlocked in Mapsource to the GPS device you are using, nRoute will use them with no limitations.

...ken...

oztaffy

I have since uninstalled and re installed both "nRoute" & my map program which is on dvd (Topo Australia & New Zealand), a Garmin product, but am now faced with a different error message when I try to open up nRoute. It reads "nRoute could not find any installed Mapsource map products. Please install one or more MapSource map products and start nRoute again"
I am a bit green, but isn't the dvd map program a Mapsource product? I did go to the Garmin website and download "Mapsource" (which was American maps) but with the same result.

tcassidy

What do you mean by "same result"? Does MapSource show your Topo product but nRoute doesn't?

If that is the case it may be in a newer format that nRoute doesn't recognize. You need MapReverseConverter to change it into a format nRoute can use. You can get it here

Many thanks for your help. I can now get back to where I started (Terry the Mapsource converter program did the trick). I do still have a couple of minor issues that you may be able to help me with.
The first is that although the maps in "nRoute" appear unlocked, they do not show all of the streets, rather just the main highways, (I seem to recall that when I had this setup installed on my previous computer, that the program said locked under the map scale. That is not the case now, although the result is still the same, I can't see the individual streets. The advice I got last time in relation to this is that I needed to install "Franson gps gate" which did the trick. For some reason it does not do so now on my new setup).
The other thing I would like to do with "nRoute" is to mark floodways on the roads that I travel on (Floodways are areas of the road where it is wider and can come up quite often in certain areas. Not sure if you call them the same thing in other parts of the world). I can of course do this with the waypoints but it has the tendency to make the maps look too "busy" if I have other things marked. Ideally what I would like to do is to colour them on the map, (I know that I could treat them as routes and therefore they would come up as yellow on the map but of course I would lose the route function by doing this. Is there any other way I could do it?)
Once again many thanks for your help

tcassidy

Are the maps unlocked in MapSource? You may have to enter the unlock code there before even GPS Gate can allow them to work in nRoute. You can probably get the code you need from MapSource on your other computer.

Terry

Boyd

Quote:

Originally Posted by oztaffy

The other thing I would like to do with "nRoute" is to mark floodways on the roads that I travel on

I know that I could treat them as routes and therefore they would come up as yellow on the map but of course I would lose the route function by doing this. Is there any other way I could do it?)

I think you want tracks, not routes. IIRC, nRoute has a nice track manager that allows you to enable/disable separate tracks and choose their display style. You could use the track drawing tool in Garmin Basecamp to create tracks for the areas you want, export them as .gpx files, then open them in nRoute.

O.K. I think me and nRoute are cursed. I am now getting the error message "Comm1 is unavailable". Is that the cue for me to launce Franson gps gate?

tcassidy

That means that the GPS you are using is not on COM1.If you are using the GPS that the maps are unlocked for and the GPS is compatible with nRoute (e.g. your GPS18 USB), you may have nRoute seach for it. The Utilities tab has a 'Select GPS Device' choice. With that click the AutoDetect button.

If some of the GPS things are not as above, start GPS Gate and let it find your GPS. It will tell you which COM port is for nRoute (the one labeled Garmin emulator). Choose that COM port in nRoute.

The other issue may be that GPS Gate is already running and COM 1 is not the correct port.